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Topic: ROCOR vs EP (Read 40938 times)

If you are in ROCOR, why are you in ROCOR? What keeps you there? Why is ROCOR 'better' than the GOA, OCA, etc.? Is it 'better'? Would you attend a non-ROCOR church for services? Do you believe that the churches under the EP have Grace? If you are in a church under the EP, do you believe ROCOR is schismatic? Do you believe that they have Grace? Would you go to a ROCOR church for services? Do you believe that ROCOR is prideful in its position against communion with EP churches? If you are in ROCOR, how would you react if a friend of yours (in ROCOR) went to the GOA, OCA, etc?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I am REALLY curious about all of them. I would ask them on another site, but this site is the friendliest of them all, and I am hoping that we won't get into any heated debates. Thank you in advance for your answers!!

If you are in a church under the EP, do you believe ROCOR is schismatic?

I am in GOA and I do not believe that ROCOR is schismatic. I see no reason that they should have to go back under the MP. Based on history, I think they have very good reasons for not going back under the MP.

If you are in a church under the EP, do you believe ROCOR is schismatic? Do you believe that they have Grace? Would you go to a ROCOR church for services? Do you believe that ROCOR is prideful in its position against communion with EP churches?

Schismatic? Yes.

Grace? Yes.

Merely go and pray with other Orthodox Christians (ROCOR ones)? Yes and I have.

I don't know if it is prideful or not, division of this sort is tragic and to be lamented and I pray for an end to it.

I can't make any accusation of pride.

I hoped for a change in the situation after the fall of the USSR. One must take into consideration the chaos after 1917 and the history up to the formation of the ROCOR.

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Tómame como al tequila, de un golpe y sin pensarlo. - Ricardo Arjona

I'd be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender and if everbody's a sinner then everybody can be a winner ...I'll see you when yo

How can ROCOR be schismatic when it is in union with the JP and Serbia? The EP is not the criterion for Orthodoxy--if it were then the MP would have been schismatic when in Feb 1996 it broke communion with Constantinople for 30 days.

I do not believe any Orthodox bishop in America believes ROCOR to be schismatic. The history of ROCOR prevents such a designation. Its communion with canonical Churches prevents it from being so as well.

I have read a bit about ROCOR and how it got its start during the tumultuous days of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, or rather in fleeing that revolution. The history is extremely confusing and complex and would be difficult for someone much more well versed in canon law than I am to disentangle.

I see ROCOR as Orthodox. I have attended ROCOR services. I respect its people and clerics and their stand for the Orthodox faith.

How does one define schism exactly? Is a temporary interruption in inter-communion a schism?

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The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way to deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers.- Pope St. Hormisdas

Just as part of the argument, do you believe the OCA was schismatic prior to 1971?

anastasios

anastasios,

It was in '70 that the OCA was given autocephaly. So before '70 given the position of the rest of the Orthodox Churches (not just two but all the others - even apparently the MP IIRC) I would say not. It was an irregular situation caused but an irregular happening/situation. That is something we were taught in undergrad Psych that an abnormal situation elicits an abnormal response.

I must defer to the majority of Orthodox Churches, not just two nor to my own opinion in this matter.

Tony

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Tómame como al tequila, de un golpe y sin pensarlo. - Ricardo Arjona

I'd be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender and if everbody's a sinner then everybody can be a winner ...I'll see you when yo

I do not believe any Orthodox bishop in America believes ROCOR to be schismatic. anastasios

Perhaps you should offer a definition of schism and schismatic. Considering what happend in the past 10 years in at least two dioceses here in the USA, I can't imagine the heads of those dioceses thinking as you.

Just my own imaginings I am sure.

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Tómame como al tequila, de un golpe y sin pensarlo. - Ricardo Arjona

I'd be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender and if everbody's a sinner then everybody can be a winner ...I'll see you when yo

'Cause it depends on th REASON that they are not in communion with the EP.

And IMHO, the reason why they are not has nothing to do with religion, but has everything to do with power and money.

My understanding (and I certainly may be wrong) is that they believe in the same sacraments, creed.. etc.

So why are they schismatic? Because they do not want to go back under the MP. I don't blame them for that.

Well I am not ROCOR so I think it is more reasonable for a ROCOR communicant to speak for that position. But, I understood it has to do with those two accusations, both of which appear to me to have to with religion, especieally "Pan-Heresy"

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Tómame como al tequila, de un golpe y sin pensarlo. - Ricardo Arjona

I'd be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender and if everbody's a sinner then everybody can be a winner ...I'll see you when yo

ROCiE and ROAC departed from their canonical bishops, as did HOCNA, so they are schismatics and in my opinion probably graceless and unOrthodox (although I will not condemn individual faithful in these groups).

Tony,

ROCOR was invited to join SCOBA when it formed. ROCOR in Europe is a part of the Orthodox bishops' association in Europe I am told (correct me if I am wrong). ROCOR chose to break communion with the GOA, not the other way around, so it is not like they are condemned schismatics from that POV.

As far as bad actions, the JP does the same thing to the Antiochians. Metro. Philip disallowed concelebration this year between Antiochians and the JP in the USA. I do not believe that makes any of them schismatic--because they are still in union with other Orthodox Churches. And Metro. Philip never calls the JP faithful schismatic to my knowledge (correct me if I am wrong).

TomS,

Many Protestants would say that external splits don't affect the body of Christ intrinsically. The reason that we are not Protestants in this regard is 1) these splits clearly show that the person leaving is not Orthodox any longer (which is why I don't think ROCOR fits the category, because everyone still thinks ROCOR is Orthodox). 2) the splittees are a very very very small minority--HOCNA has around 1000 faithful!!

I do not believe any Orthodox bishop in America believes ROCOR to be schismatic. anastasios

Perhaps you should offer a definition of schism and schismatic. Considering what happend in the past 10 years in at least two dioceses here in the USA, I can't imagine the heads of those dioceses thinking as you.

Just my own imaginings I am sure.

I offered my analogy to the JP vs. Met. Philip thing in my previous post but I offer this just to clarify: I do not believe any Orthodox bishop in the US thinks ROCOR itself to be schismatic (I could be wrong of course!) BUT I do not doubt that the bishops who lost priests/people to ROCOR think that THOSE people are schismatics. If someone left the Antiochians under suspension and went to the JP, and the JP received them, they would be schismatics too, the JP would not be schismatic itself but would be guilty of a canonical infraction (this happened with some of the Ben Lomond people).

Hypo-Ortho

Anastasios, we have a problem when we have no vehicle to call to task and put on the carpet those who are guilty of these major canonical infractions wherein one jurisdiction, even if it be an ancient Patriarchate such as that of Jerusalem, totally disregards the canonical actions of another jurisdiction and interferes therein, such as in the Ben Lomond situation between the Antiochians and the JP.

We also have examples of almost this same kind of thing between the OCA and the ROCOR, wherein the ROCOR will receive priests suspended by the OCA as if they are in good standing. I know also of at least one priest received by the OCA from the ROCOR, but I don't know the details of this priests's exiting status from the ROCOR. But, as you well know, there are usually no canonical releases ever given to clergy of either of these latter two jurisdicitions to go from one to the other.

You asked many questions, so please forgive the short answers! (Check my profile for a background on where I'm coming from)

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If you are in ROCOR, why are you in ROCOR? What keeps you there?

Because it has the spirit (or savor) of the Church to a greater extent than any jurisdiction in America. ROCOR has, for the most part, kept its conservative, traditionalist Orthodox roots, and because of this it hasn't fallen into the errors that many other groups have (e.g., ecumenism, many modernistic practices such as allowing birth control and communing at heterodox churches, changing the calendar, etc.) ROCOR is not perfect--when one tries to be conservative there is always the danger of being legalistic, closed-minded, and so forth; some fall into these dangers (me included). However, for the most part, ROCOR is the "most salty" of all the jurisdictions in America--and really in the world.

Some see the "russianness" of ROCOR as a bad thing, but it's really just them being consistent. They have always maintained that they are a Church in exile... a Church waiting to return home and again become part of the whole, undivided Church of Russia. We can't expect them to have an "American phase" somewhere in between leaving Russia and reestablishing the Russian Church! As one ROCOR Priest (who later became my spiritual father) told me before I became ROCOR, look for the truth, that's what's important. And so now, this decidedly American guy is happily sojourning in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

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Would you attend a non-ROCOR church for services?

I attended an OCA Church for vespers two weeks ago, and my wife and I plan on again visiting the Romanian (OCA) monastery in Ellwood City, PA, sometime soon. So... yes.

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Do you believe that the churches under the EP have Grace?

I'd like to think so. I'm not as sure as I used to be. I guess they do. Don't quote me on that.

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If you are in ROCOR, how would you react if a friend of yours (in ROCOR) went to the GOA, OCA, etc?

But all my ROCOR friends are going the opposite direction! For me, it would depend on a number of factors, most importantly whether he had became ROCOR later in his life or not. For someone to have been born into ROCOR and then switch, I guess I would majorly disagree with that move. However, I think it'd be a much worse move were someone to become ROCOR later in life and then decide to leave. Why all the changing? What has changed that they wanted to be ROCOR, and now want to leave? Also, why OCA, GOA, or whatever? If they have some problem with ROCOR, why not another more traditionalist jurisdiction, such as GOC? Or at least a jurisdiction with traditionalist aspects to it, such as the Serbs or Jerusalem? I would also let my friend know that in a few years, he might not like what I'd be saying... if the OCA, GOA, etc. kept going down the path they were on. More importantly, he (I hope!) wouldn't like where he was, and would have to "switch back" yet again.

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I would ask them on another site, but this site is the friendliest of them all,

That got me to laugh out loud. Not that I'm disputing what you're saying. Sort of. Lol.

Yes, OC.net has won the prestigious Anastasios award for the nicest place on the internet to discuss Orthodoxy! What other Orthodox site actually supports members meeting in person on weekend gettogethers? ;-)

This quote from Chesterton (written while he was an Anglican, oddly enough) is one of my favorite passages from a contemporary western writer. It also happens to (more or less) reflect the way I feel about ROCOR.

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This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly.

The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob.

To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Anastasios, I think you're splitting some hairs pretty finely here. Surely the secular justification for the existence of ROCOR is gone; therefore, why shouldn't the exile end? They are something beyond simply another overlapping jurisdiction, and indeed the remarks by Paradosis would seems to indicate that they've gone beyond the political separation wherein they originated, and have developed elements which the Orthodox here have made negative remarks about. There does appear to me to be schism here, but limited in scope and nature.

What is curious is that the Orthodox core seems to want to minimize this. Personally, I have a great deal of trouble with ROCOR receiving suspended OCA priests; it has a vagante quality to it. It puzzles me that this is tolerated.

Does it also puzzle you that the OCA receive people like "Archbishop" Lazar Puhalo?

First, it is incorrect to say that all the original reasons for seperation are over. The MP still continues to maintain exactly what it has since 1927: that there is nothing wrong with Sergianism. It's not just "newly conceived excuses" that force ROCOR to continue in exile. There is also the problem with Ecumenism, but there is an even greater problem, IMO. If we (ROCOR) were indeed to reunite with the other parts of the Russian Church as one Church, we would be in communion with world Orthodoxy. We would be in communion with Antioch and Constantinople. This is simply unacceptable. ROCOR is Orthodox--and for those who worry of such things, she is "canonical" and "valid" as well. It's become so very common to make everything into a political game; it's odd that those who bewail that "the division is all politics" are normally the ones who refuse to actually look at the issues and are therefore being the most political. My reasons for becoming ROCOR were theological and practical: they had the fulness of the truth.

Oddly enough, a ROCORite recently quoted an Anglican in an extremely favorable way on this forum, and the majority of his posts over the last few weeks have been on how we might profitably dialogue with westerners (ie. non-Orthodox). I also talk daily with people who are from the GOA, ROAC, and a host of other jurisdictions--in other words, a wide variety of Orthodox. ROCOR is certainly not reclusive and unwilling to talk with others. Good shot though, you really knocked that straw man to pieces!

From Paradosis: If we (ROCOR) were indeed to reunite with the other parts of the Russian Church as one Church, we would be in communion with world Orthodoxy. We would be in communion with Antioch and Constantinople. This is simply unacceptable.

And the problem with all of that is . . .?

Excuse me for saying it, Paradosis, since I have a generally favorable view of ROCOR, but its persistence in maintaining a separate existence gives the appearance of prelates who do not wish to give up comfortable positions of authority. That's what it looks like anyway.

Besides, wasn't it Constantinople that offered what would become ROCOR its first place of refuge?

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The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way to deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers.- Pope St. Hormisdas

Does it also puzzle you that the OCA receive people like "Archbishop" Lazar Puhalo?

Well, it might if I understood exactly what is the problem with him. Googling for his name produces lots of ordinary news reports and a few ROCOR people who plainly object to him but who don't explain why.

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First, it is incorrect to say that all the original reasons for seperation are over.

The precise words I used were "secular justification". If we are now resorting to religious justifications, then I think we are talking a state of schism with some concessions made, rather than a state of impaired unity.

I'm fairly sure I don't want to know what is wrong with the Antiochians or the EP. I can understand having issues with Alexy-- I have issues with him. But the words you use, Paradosis, seem to me to indicate a slip into a rejection of collegiality in the strongest sense: you reject their criticism as being next to unOrthodox.

Hypo-Ortho

Does it also puzzle you that the OCA receive people like "Archbishop" Lazar Puhalo?

First, it is incorrect to say that all the original reasons for seperation are over. The MP still continues to maintain exactly what it has since 1927: that there is nothing wrong with Sergianism. It's not just "newly conceived excuses" that force ROCOR to continue in exile. There is also the problem with Ecumenism, but there is an even greater problem, IMO. If we (ROCOR) were indeed to reunite with the other parts of the Russian Church as one Church, we would be in communion with world Orthodoxy. We would be in communion with Antioch and Constantinople. This is simply unacceptable. ROCOR is Orthodox--and for those who worry of such things, she is "canonical" and "valid" as well. It's become so very common to make everything into a political game; it's odd that those who bewail that "the division is all politics" are normally the ones who refuse to actually look at the issues and are therefore being the most political. My reasons for becoming ROCOR were theological and practical: they had the fulness of the truth.

O Justin, Justin! What a harsh judge you are. At the Old Calendar celebrations marking the 100th anniverary of the death of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Diveyevo, His Beatitude, +Metropolitan HERMAN, Primate of the OCA, and His Holiness, +PAVLE, Patriarch of Serbia, were His Holiness, Patriarch Alexy II's principal concelebrants (check out the story with photos at www.oca.org). And, as you well know, hierarchs of the Serbian Patriarchate regularly serve with those of the ROCOR! And here we have Serbian Patriarch PAVLE personally serving with the Primates of both the MP and the OCA. Ironic, no?

If we (ROCOR) were indeed to reunite with the other parts of the Russian Church as one Church, we would be in communion with world Orthodoxy. We would be in communion with Antioch and Constantinople. This is simply unacceptable. ROCOR is Orthodox--and for those who worry of such things, she is "canonical" and "valid" as well. It's become so very common to make everything into a political game; it's odd that those who bewail that "the division is all politics" are normally the ones who refuse to actually look at the issues and are therefore being the most political. My reasons for becoming ROCOR were theological and practical: they had the fulness of the truth.

I know about Athanasius contra mundum but:

1. This sounds like vagante ecclesiology.

2. Who is 'Orthodox'? Addendum: ROCOR is Eastern Orthodox, not only because it has the same creed and practices as EOs and even the right 'feeling' but because it is in the Eastern Orthodox communion, thanks to the Church of Serbia.

3. In an article whose link I posted on my blog Aug. 11, Fr Chad Hatfield wrote that as an Orthodox (and unlike Anglicans and Catholics) he didn't need to seek 'a church within the church' or 'defend the Church of God' within the church anymore: now the (Orthodox) Church defends him. This contradicts that.

I imagine it would sound vagante to you Serge, since you hold to a neo-papal-patriarchal ecclesiology. It's somewhat like the Monophysites calling the Orthodox "Nestorians".

PS. And to clarify: no, I am not saying you are not Orthodox, just pointing out that from an incorrect perspective one makes incorrect judgments about others. I don't claim to have a perfect perspective--far from it!--but I think I can see well enough to see that you are wrong on this point.

One problem with that is that they commune and concelebrate with heretics. Just their "ecumenical activity" is enough, in itself, to make ROCOR stay away. Some stay less away than others (it's my understanding that ROCOR participates in the European version of SCOBA to some extent), but we certainly wouldn't have full communion. If we would be ok with that, then we wouldn't be seperated from the various local Churches even now; but because of love we remain apart. And because of love we seek union in a correct faith. Unfortunately too many people seem to have gotten it into their heads that "it's all political" or "they just like to be apart," and so unity becomes all that much more difficult.

Here is a question to ROCOR communicants: Is it your understanding that by your communion with Serbia and the JP you are thus in communion with "World Orthodoxy"? So, as if the JP and Serbia are conduits and communion is a current you are in communion with the MP and the EP and the GOA and the OCA? Do you understand this is the position of ROCOR?

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Tómame como al tequila, de un golpe y sin pensarlo. - Ricardo Arjona

I'd be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender and if everbody's a sinner then everybody can be a winner ...I'll see you when yo

ROCiE and ROAC departed from their canonical bishops, as did HOCNA, so they are schismatics and in my opinion probably graceless and unOrthodox (although I will not condemn individual faithful in these groups).

Would you be willing to make the same appraisal of the Nestorians, Monophysites, Roman Catholics, etc.? (schismatic and graceless)